I want to echo this sentiment:
Change in society depends upon privacy. Women’s suffrage would not have happened without the ability for women to meet in secret to plan public assembly. This is also true of the civil rights movement. Gay marriage required gay relationships which were also illegal at the time.
Imagine how much more oppressive the in-crowd can be with perfect surveillance of financial transactions.
To be clear, I think money and speech are different. I also believe that a fully financially surveilled society is a totalitarian state where free speech is impossible.
We have to find a compromise where we retain some semblance of privacy in the digital banking era. To lose any hope of privacy is to accept tyranny.
It is possible for us, as technologists, to build systems that both comply with the law and create privacy for the customer, at least in the US as the laws are written today. The danger is the incredibly rapid expanse of surveillance powers as they relate to finance.
Please take a moment to research what is happening in the US right now. This is the front page of Bloomberg from a couple days ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-12/china-....